In 2009, I became extremely concerned with the concept of Unique Identity for various reasons. Connected with many like minded highly educated people who were all concerned.
On 18th May 2010, I started this Blog to capture anything and everything I came across on the topic. This blog with its million hits is a testament to my concerns about loss of privacy and fear of the ID being misused and possible Criminal activities it could lead to.
In 2017 the Supreme Court of India gave its verdict after one of the longest hearings on any issue. I did my bit and appealed to the Supreme Court Judges too through an On Line Petition.
In 2019 the Aadhaar Legislation has been revised and passed by the two houses of the Parliament of India making it Legal. I am no Legal Eagle so my Opinion carries no weight except with people opposed to the very concept.
In 2019, this Blog now just captures on a Daily Basis list of Articles Published on anything to do with Aadhaar as obtained from Daily Google Searches and nothing more. Cannot burn the midnight candle any longer.
"In Matters of Conscience, the Law of Majority has no place"- Mahatma Gandhi
Ram Krishnaswamy
Sydney, Australia.

Aadhaar

The UIDAI has taken two successive governments in India and the entire world for a ride. It identifies nothing. It is not unique. The entire UID data has never been verified and audited. The UID cannot be used for governance, financial databases or anything. It’s use is the biggest threat to national security since independence. – Anupam Saraph 2018

When I opposed Aadhaar in 2010 , I was called a BJP stooge. In 2016 I am still opposing Aadhaar for the same reasons and I am told I am a Congress die hard. No one wants to see why I oppose Aadhaar as it is too difficult. Plus Aadhaar is FREE so why not get one ? Ram Krishnaswamy

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.-Mahatma Gandhi

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.Mahatma Gandhi

“The invasion of privacy is of no consequence because privacy is not a fundamental right and has no meaning under Article 21. The right to privacy is not a guaranteed under the constitution, because privacy is not a fundamental right.” Article 21 of the Indian constitution refers to the right to life and liberty -Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi

“There is merit in the complaints. You are unwittingly allowing snooping, harassment and commercial exploitation. The information about an individual obtained by the UIDAI while issuing an Aadhaar card shall not be used for any other purpose, save as above, except as may be directed by a court for the purpose of criminal investigation.”-A three judge bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar said in an interim order.

Legal scholar Usha Ramanathan describes UID as an inverse of sunshine laws like the Right to Information. While the RTI makes the state transparent to the citizen, the UID does the inverse: it makes the citizen transparent to the state, she says.

Good idea gone bad
I have written earlier that UID/Aadhaar was a poorly designed, unreliable and expensive solution to the really good idea of providing national identification for over a billion Indians. My petition contends that UID in its current form violates the right to privacy of a citizen, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. This is because sensitive biometric and demographic information of citizens are with enrolment agencies, registrars and sub-registrars who have no legal liability for any misuse of this data. This petition has opened up the larger discussion on privacy rights for Indians. The current Article 21 interpretation by the Supreme Court was done decades ago, before the advent of internet and today’s technology and all the new privacy challenges that have arisen as a consequence.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP Rajya Sabha

“What is Aadhaar? There is enormous confusion. That Aadhaar will identify people who are entitled for subsidy. No. Aadhaar doesn’t determine who is eligible and who isn’t,” Jairam Ramesh

But Aadhaar has been mythologised during the previous government by its creators into some technology super force that will transform governance in a miraculous manner. I even read an article recently that compared Aadhaar to some revolution and quoted a 1930s historian, Will Durant.Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP

“I know you will say that it is not mandatory. But, it is compulsorily mandatorily voluntary,” Jairam Ramesh, Rajya Saba April 2017.

August 24, 2017: The nine-judge Constitution Bench rules that right to privacy is “intrinsic to life and liberty”and is inherently protected under the various fundamental freedoms enshrined under Part III of the Indian Constitution

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the World; indeed it's the only thing that ever has"

“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” -Edward Snowden

In the Supreme Court, Meenakshi Arora, one of the senior counsel in the case, compared it to living under a general, perpetual, nation-wide criminal warrant.

Had never thought of it that way, but living in the Aadhaar universe is like living in a prison. All of us are treated like criminals with barely any rights or recourse and gatekeepers have absolute power on you and your life.

Announcing the launch of the # BreakAadhaarChainscampaign, culminating with events in multiple cities on 12th Jan. This is the last opportunity to make your voice heard before the Supreme Court hearings start on 17th Jan 2018. In collaboration with @no2uidand@rozi_roti.

UIDAI's security seems to be founded on four time tested pillars of security idiocy

1) Denial

2) Issue fiats and point finger

3) Shoot messenger

4) Bury head in sand.

God Save India

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

986 - Apple Faces Class Action Suit over App Privacy in iPhone, iPad - TMC net

December 28, 2010
Janice McDuffee, TMC Copy Editor

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Apple, Inc. alleging several of its applications pass personal information from iPhone (News - Alert) and iPad users to third party advertisers without consent.

The suit filed Dec. 23 on behalf of Jonathan Lalo in a federal court in San Jose, Calif., asserts the Cupertino, Calif.-based company violated federal computer fraud and privacy laws by allowing advertisers to view what applications are downloaded as well as the duration of use. The lawsuit refers to the Unique Device ID (UDID) contained in iPhones and iPads that provides the information, from which users have no option of concealing to advertising networks, Bloomberg (News - Alert) reports.
 “Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users’ location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation and political views,” the suit stated, according to Bloomberg.
Application developers including Dictionary.com, Pandora (News - Alert), Paper Toss, TextPlus4 and The Weather Channel are also listed as defendants in the suit.
Yahoo! Finance reports that Apple amended its developer agreement in April to ban applications from sending any information beyond what is necessary for their functionality to third party advertisers. However, the suit contends that criticism from advertising networks caused Apple’s failure to implement the changes.
"None of the defendants adequately informed plaintiffs of their practices, and none of the defendants obtained plaintiffs' consent to do so," the lawsuit alleged, according to Yahoo! Finance.
Facebook (News - Alert) has faced similar issues, most recently acknowledging that several of its applications were passing information to third party advertisers—particularly, the data referred to as User (UID)—that infringed its privacy agreement and has promised to fix the problem. However, one Facebook engineer noted in a blog post that knowledge of a UID does not give access to personal information without user content.
The suit against Apple seeks class action or group status and seeks users of iPhone and iPad who downloaded an application between December 1, 2008 and last week. The case is Lalo vs. Apple, 10-5878, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).
This is one of several legal issues flaring up with Apple that have caused the company to bulk up its legal team. In fact, Bloomberg reported that Apple became the most sued technology company after its release of the iPhone in 2008. Many of the disputes are among other tech companies over intellectual property rights, the most recent battle being against Nokia (News  - Alert), which claimed that the latest iPhone violated 10 of its patents. The suit came after Apple filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission requesting a block of Nokia’s imports to the United States. The patent dispute continues as Apple filed a countersuit alleging that Nokia has violated 13 of its own patents.

Janice McDuffee has worked in marketing, editing and freelance writing for companies including SheKnows and HBM Inc. after receiving her master’s and bachelor’s degrees in journalism from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

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